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Vladimir Putin: The Untouchable Leader

Experts question whether Obama can and should put the elusive Russian president directly in his sights.

President Barack Obama's dismissal of Russia as merely a "regional power" will have done little to assuage the concerns of Eastern European leaders, who are worried that Vladimir Putin's quest to return former Soviet territory to the Russian Federation is not finished with his incursion into Ukraine. The Russian president still could use similar political maneuvers to annex separatist regions of Moldova or Georgia.

Situation rooms across the Western hemisphere undoubtedly are weighing the effects of new targeted sanctions aimed at specific loyalists within Putin’s innermost circles. Obama also has threatened to go after certain sectors of the Russian economy. Russia must be punished and deterred from future action, officials say, but the West also relies on its former Cold War rival to help with other international crises, including removing chemical weapons from Syria, controlling Iran’s nuclear program and keeping North Korea from further acts of aggression.

Amid this debate, and assertions from Obama that he has ruled out a military response, Putin himself remains directly unscathed by sanctions that could affect his travel or personal finances. A senior administration official told reporters last week the White House is not currently considering explicit sanctions against Putin, calling such a move "highly unusual and a rather extraordinary case."

“We do not begin these types of sanction efforts with a head of state," the official said.

But some observers question whether the former KGB officer is untouchable. And many prominent national security leaders who forged their careers during the Cold War say the White House's approach is a grave mistake.

A group of such officials, including a former director of the CIA and NSA, released an open letter last week calling on Obama to, as they said, “impose real costs on the government of President Vladimir Putin,” to include targeted sanctions against the man himself. The current sanctions, levied against former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych as well as Putin's chief advisers and political allies, freeze overseas bank accounts and restrict travel abroad.

The letter, released by the conservative-leaning think tank Foreign Policy Initiative, was signed by retired Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden, retired Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut – a Democrat turned independent – and 48 others.

“You have to have tough measures in place, which create a deterrent that is so strong [Putin] needs to negotiate out of them,” says letter signatory and career diplomat Kurt Volker, who served as the U.S. permanent representative to NATO under Obama and former President George W. Bush. “Yes, it is unusual, but it is also unusual circumstances for a country to invade and take over another neighboring country. If there is any real reluctance to consider any kind of military pushback, then why not limit the financial aid?”

Imposing direct sanctions on Putin would be a direct shot across the bow, rather than the current U.S. approach of imposing collateral damage. It also would inject a personal element into a global political stalemate: Putin has been accused of grossly ramping up the benefits of the presidential office during his tenure and is rumored to be one of the world’s most wealthy men, according to a 2012 New York Times expose. The key, then, could be to lay the crosshairs on his own wealth.

Putin is one of the world’s biggest thieves, says Eric Edelman, who previously served as the Pentagon’s undersecretary for policy and is another letter signatory. He cites other leaders the U.S. has held to account with sanctions, including Panama’s Manuel Noriega, Libya's Moammar Gadhafi, North Korea's Kim Jong Il and Iraq's Saddam Hussein, along with Hussein's sons Uday and Qusay.

"Why haven't we done it with [Putin]? Let's be frank: It's because he's the head of a very large country,” says Edelman, who was also the U.S. ambassador to Turkey under Bush and to Finland under President Bill Clinton. “He clearly leads a country that has a very large nuclear arsenal, the only one in the world that really rivals ours.”

The perceived danger of poking the bear of the Eastern Hemisphere has prompted experts on sanctions to take pause. They caution the White House against targeting the Russian leader directly, and question even whether the existing sanctions will work.

“[Sanctions] tend to make their targets less democratic, increase the amount of oppression, adversely affect women’s rights and increase the number of human rights abuses – many of the reasons why people were criticizing the Russian regime before it even invaded Crimea,” says Bryan Early, a professor at the University at Albany who specializes in international sanctions.

“Instead of often weakening leaders’ domestic position, economic sanctions often allow leaders to rally domestic political support against external violations of sovereignty that are perceived by sanctions, and allow for scapegoating against the foreign powers for the hardships they create,” he says.

Direct sanctions would be a symbolic statement, Early says, but would probably do more to annoy Putin rather than prompt him to cooperate. And, unless the CIA is working on a massive direct-action plan, the Russian leader is not leaving power anytime soon.

“In the past, we really haven’t sanctioned heads of state that we aren’t trying to overthrow,” says Ben Graham, a professor in the School of International Relations at the University of Southern California. “I don’t think we’re trying to overthrow President Putin, so I do not expect the U.S. government to sanction Putin directly.”

Indeed, Putin's popularity at home has surged since the Crimean incursion. And making the conflict personal could back the Russian president into a corner, which would make it more difficult to get him to back down. That, in turn, could endanger diplomatic efforts that stretch beyond the Ukrainian crisis.

For example, Russia has consistently blocked international resolutions to stem the violence in Syria. It also was the only "no" vote on a March security council measure denouncing the Crimean referendum to secede from Ukraine.

“The reason we don’t sanction heads of state … is that we don’t want to impair the function of future governance, because we want to continue to negotiate with them and interact with them effectively,” Graham says. “Russia is a member of the U.N. Security Council, and as long as the Europeans and the U.S. are at loggerheads with Russia, nothing substantive in the international security domain is going to happen through the U.N.”

This gridlock leaves other international organizations, like NATO, as the only groups left standing to combat Russian aggression on the world’s stage. “That’s not the end of the world, but it is a high cost,” Graham says.

It's a cost that the U.S., so far, has deemed too high to pay.